“Netflix” by flickr user Jenny Cestnik.

This month, Netflix moved one step closer to media domination, launching its streaming service in 130 countries, bringing the total number of countries-where-one-can-watch-Netflix to 190, including India and Russia. (Notably missing: Indonesia, which banned the service because of its “unfiltered content.”) With some 70 million users and dozens of award-winning original series, the streaming giant is causing some in Hollywood to freak out. (Cable, meanwhile, is already in full-fledged panic mode with cord-cutting numbers rising dramatically.) But Netflix is only part of the story: Amazon, which closed 2015 with more US subscribers than Netflix, and earned serious accolades for its original series Mozart in the Jungle, Transparent, and Man In The High Castle, is now elbowing its way into film distribution. At Sundance this month, Amazon outbid Sony Pictures Classics, Universal, Fox Searchlight and Lionsgate to nab the Matt Damon-produced drama Manchester by the Sea. This is part of a larger trend of streaming services outbidding traditional theatrical distributors and is a major reversal from last year, when both Amazon and Netflix were shut out of the Sundance bidding, indicating streaming services are gaining ground not just with the casual watcher at home, but with directors, producers and actors on the international stage.

Canada Council commits to diversity regulations with teeth. Last June, the Canada Council for the Arts announced a major restructuring of its grant making programs, with plans to reduce its 147 separate programs–each with its own guidelines, deadlines and reporting–to six. The model will go live in April 2017, in honor of the Council’s 60th anniversary. Details of the plan emerged this past month, and the most interesting–and perhaps even radical–of them is the fact that the Council has decided to include diversity among the list of criteria considered when making recommendations of grants and grant amounts. For institutions with revenue of more than $2 million, the diversity of the arts “on stage” as well as that of the team “behind the curtain” will be judged. If your institution does not demonstrate a “commitment to reflecting the diversity of your organization’s geographic community or region,” this will now affect the size of grant received from the federal arts council. If the liberal government keeps its campaign promise, the Council’s annual budget will grow to $360 million over the next two years–enough for the Council to have a real impact on the diversity of the country’s arts organizations. The Council’s decision follows that of Arts Council England, which made a similar shift to towards increasing diversity in December 2014 (though organizations there have until 2018 to get in line.) The United States is not quite there yet, but the nation’s two largest cities seem to be laying groundwork in place: in New York, a survey by the Department of Cultural Affairs released this month indicated that by and large the city’s arts organizations do not reflect the city’s diversity, and Los Angeles County recently formed an advisory committee to examine “proposals that would lead to more diverse arts boards, staff, audience members, and programming at appropriate arts institutions.”

#OscarsStillSoWhite…but not for long? In what the LA Times described as “another embarrassing Hollywood sequel,” the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced for the second year in a row a roster of all-white acting nominees (and no best picture nominations for films focusing on minority populations despite various viable options). This prompted a resurgence of the 2015 hashtag #OscarsSoWhite (and the birth of its offspring #OscarsStillSoWhite), with actors such as Will Smith pledging to boycott the February 28 awards ceremony or calling for host Chris Rock to step aside. The Academy’s board and President Cheryl Boone Isaacs responded with an emergency meeting that resulted in a unanimous vote for “radical changes” with the goal of doubling the number of female and minority members by 2020. These include plans for reviewing and possibly revoking the voting status of the (94% white) lifelong members who are less active in the motion picture industry to make way for more diverse voters; an “ambitious, global” recruitment campaign (as opposed to the old small group nomination system); and the addition of three new board seats (to hopefully be filled by members of color). Though this year’s still-so-white Oscars announcement, and the Academy’s sweeping response, provoked a flurry of media attention (even a statement by President Obama), as we documented in our 2015 annual news roundup, Hollywood has been slowly waking up to the need to do something about its diversity problem over the past year. Despite grumbles from some established Academy members, the overall 2016 public and institutional reaction is in sharp contrast to Jesse Jackson’s failed 1996 protest against a similarly homogenous Oscars lineup. While the effectiveness of the Academy’s latest measures remains to be seen, one can be sure that the organization’s diversity efforts will receive some red-carpet-worthy scrutiny.

Philadelphia Media Network donated to the Philadelphia Foundation. In October, as part of a larger story on alt-weeklies and their perhaps dubious future, we noted that Philadelphia’s beloved City Paper had published its last edition. Philadelphia journalism captures our attention once again this month, but for much better reason. In a surprise move, H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest, the sole owner of the Philadelphia Media Network, gifted the PMN, which runs The Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com website, to the Institute for Journalism in New Media, a subsidiary of the Philadelphia Foundation. It’s the first time a major local newspaper has gone “nonprofit” since the advent of the internet, and the structure is certainly complicated. While unique and untested, the new alignment has the promise to preserve and enhance public-interest reporting while new electronic distribution methods are developed. The nonprofit status is not yet a done deal (the IRS has yet to weigh in), and the new format won’t necessarily solve outright the newspapers’ varied struggles. However, with newspapers continuing to struggle across the board, if this unusual structure is successful, it’s possible other papers will follow suit.

New directions at the Irvine Foundation. For the past year, James Irvine Foundation president Don Howard has been leading his staff in an deep exploration of what the foundation might change or do better. (You can read many of the responses to this question here and here, and Diane Ragsdale’s response, which pushes back against the foundation’s perspective that arts engagement is the most important issue facing the arts, here.) The foundation, which is the largest funder of the arts in California, has in recent years focused its resources on three areas, (1) engaging in the arts; (2) advancing democracy in California; and (3) preparing youth for success. Now, the foundation has announced an evolving focus: “expanding economic and political opportunity for families and young adults who are working but struggling with poverty.” This new direction seems squarely focused on two of those three areas, with the arts notably absent. The foundation has made assurances that it will remain committed to current grantees for the time being, and work continues apace on several existing programs, including the Arts Regional Initiative which just published a new report. In the long term, however, the arts’ role seems much murkier; a response to an inquiry about continuing arts support promises only that the foundation is “excited to explore how new initiatives focused on creative expression and the arts can be part of new initiatives aligned with our evolving focus.”

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• Bruce W. Davis has been named President and CEO of ArtsKC, Kansas City’s regional arts council.
• Charles Thomas, an experienced social entrepreneur and civic innovator, will join the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as a program director based in Charlotte.
• The School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington, invites applications for a full-time lecturer faculty position in the area of arts management. Posted January 23; no closing date.
• The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage hiring a Senior Visual Arts Specialist. Posted January 26; no closing date.
• ArtsKC is hiring a Director of Programs and Grants to replace the retiring Paul Tyler. Closing date February 26.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• A research article published in AERA Open this month lends new evidence to argument for the benefits of arts engagement at an early age.
• Ingenuity’s third State of the Arts in Chicago Public Schools released this month details the arts assets available to CPS students in the 2014-15 school year.
• A longitudinal study of over 700 U.S. companies released this month suggests implementing diversity training programs does not actually increase diversity. On the flip side, a report published by Stanford Graduate School of Education found that at-risk high school students benefit from taking ethnic studies classes, which introduce a diversity of perspectives and may better align with personal cultural experience.
• New York attorney general Eric T. Schneiderman’s office sheds light on widespread abuses in ticketing industry in New York.
• A white paper from the National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University examines the distinguishing characteristics of arts organizations that primarily serve communities of color, in a response to the widely discussed (and criticized) report from the DeVos Institute on the same topic last year.
• Move over TV: Repucom, which researches sports and entertainment markets, surveyed adults between 13 and 34 in Britain, France, Germany, Japan and the United States and found that music is the top leisure interest for the millennial generation.
• Linguists Carmen Fought and Karen Eisenhauer analyzed all the dialogue from the Disney princess franchise and found that even in movies where the princess is the protagonist, male roles speak more than female roles.
• A few studies this month looked at art through a city lens. One, published in the academic journal Economic Development Quarterly, looks at the links between big performing arts organizations (those with budgets over $2 million) and the change in what Richard Florida defines at the ‘creative class’. A report commissioned by the Boston Foundation shows Boston trails other cities in institutional arts funding, and the Three-City Arts Study, released by Partners for Sacred Spaces, provides a scalable, replicable model for matching small to mid-size dance and theater companies having space needs with historic sacred places that have available space.
• Two reports this month looked at the contemporary art market. One, released by economics professors at the University of Luxembourg suggests that the international art market is overheating, creating the potential for a “severe correction” in the postwar and contemporary and American segments. Another looks at what kind of person who opens a private contemporary art museum.
• And finally, looking to the international stage, UNESCO released a report on the impact of the “Convention on Protection & Promotion of Diversity of Cultural Expressions,” and the 2016 Global NGO Online Technology Report provided insight into the global NGO sector and its use of online technology.

Seward Johnson, “A Reason to Smile,” installed at Grounds For Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ. (Photo by Flickr user Wally Gobetz)

On November 13, gunmen opened fire on approximately 1,500 unsuspecting audience members at an Eagles of Death Metal concert at Paris’s historic Le Bataclan music hall, killing 89. The Bataclan was the deadliest site in a cluster of coordinated terrorist attacks throughout the city that evening for which ISIS claimed responsibility. While U2 frontman Bono described the Bataclan massacre as “the first direct hit on music in this so-called war on terror,” the scale and locations of these attacks only solidified an unsettling new direction in terrorism: concert halls, stadiums, cafes, museums, and other cultural institutions (not just local or politically symbolic international sites) have all been targets this year. Indeed, ISIS’s statement of responsibility indicated that the attack sites were carefully chosen as symbols of “abominations and perversion.”

Leaders have responded by bolstering both physical and financial security for cultural venues. In addition to new safety measures, French cultural minister Fleur Pellerin established a “solidarity fund” of approximately $6 million to protect music groups from “expected declines in business and other financial hardships.” President François Hollande revealed a proposal for France’s museums to temporarily house Syrian cultural objects “at risk” of ISIS looting. Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has pledged 1 billion euros to spend equally on culture and security, which has raised concerns among Italy’s business leaders that a corporate tax cut could be postponed as a result. How to protect concert halls and stadiums, and who will ultimately pay, have likewise come up in New York City: Ray Waddell, a senior editor at Billboard, suggested that more metal detectors and bag checks may mean higher ticket prices.

While questions remain about how best to allocate resources, protecting culture now seems especially urgent in “fighting back against a group that is notorious for destroying cultural symbols and objects it deems idolatrous.”

STEM education just got a little STEAMier: In what arts education advocates considered a “huge win,” the joint House-Senate Conference Committee unanimously accepted a bipartisan amendment to the rewrite of the nation’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) (aka “No Child Left Behind”) that will integrate the arts into STEM education. Introduced by Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), the amendment sets the stage for new K-12 education policy by acknowledging that arts integration can “improve attainment of STEM-related skills” (science, technology, engineering and math). Last week, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) that reauthorizes ESEA and includes additional language about the importance of the arts to a “well-rounded education.” ESSA’s more flexible math/reading test requirements and emphasis on state-level decision-making may also be friendly to arts education strategies, according to a detailed analysis by the National Art Education Association. This victory for arts ed advocates comes just after the Arts Education Partnership launched a five-year Action Agenda for Advancing the Arts in Education. It similarly emphasizes the importance of arts integration especially in underperforming and impoverished schools, and recommends incorporating the arts into training for teachers and academic leaders.

A new day in Canada: In a November letter to Minister of Culture Melanie Joly, new Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demonstrated his intentions to make good on campaign promises to double the Canada Arts Council budget, provide $150M to CBC/Radio Canada, reinvest in Telefilm Canada and the National Film Board, and provide increased support for indigenous culture and youth initiatives. This is welcome news to arts groups after nine years of arts funding cuts under former conservative PM Stephen Harper. According to the Globe and Mail, Joly’s youth and relative inexperience in government will hopefully be an asset rather than liability in achieving this ambitious agenda while also redefining the ministry with “symbols of progressiveness.” Trudeau also gained popularity with social scientists when he announced in early November the reinstatement of a mandatory national census, which serves as the bedrock of all government data collection.

Ford Foundation’s new inequality-focused agenda will include the arts: In June we reported on Ford’s announcement that the foundation will shift its entire focus to fighting inequality. Three months later, president Darren Walker has revealed more detail on the specifics of the new strategy, which will involve consolidating 35 program areas into 15. While detailed arts funding guidelines have yet to be announced, Ford’s website lists a reframed creativity and free expression program encompassing “social justice storytelling” and “21st century arts infrastructure.” Walker’s “New Gospel of Wealth” essay suggests that the foundation’s ultimate goal is a reformed capitalist system, and creative expression is considered a piece of the puzzle. Ford will privilege initiatives for broader structural change over those providing direct assistance to the poor; discontinued programs include direct cash transfers in Latin America and microfinance, as well as causes like LGBT rights that have gained philanthropic support from other sources in recent years.While Ford’s program to construct new art spaces will also be cut, the foundation will increase its general operating support–with a new BUILD initiative to specifically strengthen the operations of social justice-oriented institutions and partnerships.

Cleveland arts organizations light up on election day as cigarette tax for the arts is renewed: An overwhelming majority of voters passed Issue 8, which will renew Cuyahoga County’s 10-year, 30-cent-a-pack tax on cigarettes to support arts and culture. The original approval of this tax in 2006 turned a region with scant arts funding into “one of the most highly ranked metro areas in the country in local public support for the arts.” More than 300 large and small arts organizations have depended on the $125 million in cigarette tax proceeds distributed since 2008 for both general operating support and special projects. The campaign to renew the levy was propelled by an Arts and Culture Action Committee that raised over $1 million for advertising, but the renewal faced very little visible opposition.

MUSICAL CHAIRS/COOL JOBS

• Prince Charitable Trusts welcomes Carolynn Brunette, who will head its Washington, D.C. office as Managing Director and also co-direct the Rhode Island program, beginning on January 1. Carolyn succeeds retiring Managing Director Kristin Pauly, who has been with Prince Charitable Trusts since 1998.
• New Orleans Arts Council CEO Kim Cook announced her departure at the end of 2015; Acting Director Nick Stillman will oversee the organization in the interim. Cook is moving to the Bay Area to serve as Burning Man’s Director of Art & Civic Engagement, a newly created position.
• Longtime theater critic Steven Leigh Morris will assume the role of LA Stage Alliance’s new executive director.
• UC Davis Law professor and international human rights scholar Karima Bennoune has been appointed special rapporteur on cultural rights to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
• The nonprofit sector mourned the sudden November 17 death of Rick Cohen, nonprofit advocate and national correspondent for Nonprofit Quarterly. Cohen previously led the led the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a foundation watchdog, and was known for focusing on the needs of low-income and underrepresented populations.
• CERF+, a national nonprofit that “provides a safety net to artists through readiness, education and relief programs,” seeks a Director of Programs. Deadline 12/18.
• The Newark Arts Council seeks a new Executive Director. Deadline January 1.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• The new book Making Culture Count: The Politics of Cultural Measurement, part of Australia-based publisher Palgrave Macmillan’s New Directions in Cultural Policy series, explores diverse approaches to cultural measurement and their political implications.
• Nesta, a UK-based foundation, presents a potentially fresh approach for measuring the intrinsic benefits of the arts–including asking people how much they would need to be paid to compensate for the removal of cultural institutions.
• An initial report on spillover effects of public investment in arts and culture in Europe reviews existing evidence and recommends a future “holistic research agenda” for the European Union.
• In the United States, the Nonprofit Finance Fund published an arts-specific analysis of its annual State of the Sector Survey, encompassing data from over 900 arts, culture and humanities organizations. Trends include decreased debt (but ongoing challenges with sustainability), and an emphasis on expanded programming and audience-building, as well as more focus on outcomes measurement.
• The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance’s new assessment of the nonprofit arts sector spanning 11 U.S. metropolitan areas (using Cultural Data Project data) found that increased earned income is driving many organizations’ recession recovery, but they also face decreased contributed income among other fiscal challenges.
• A Theater Communications Group study indicates that U.S. nonprofit theaters still face shrinking attendance despite increased revenue; offering more family-friendly programming may help. Early exposure to theater could benefit young people in various ways; the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders published findings from a randomized control trial that suggest theater training may boost skills in kids with autism.
• A new study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia offers a closer look at the pros and cons of gentrification in the City of Brotherly Love, with implications for national urban policy.
• The arts management workforce still does not match the diversity of the general population. Meanwhile, a survey of UK arts professionals suggests a “stark gender pay gap.”
• A Los Angeles County Arts Commission report analyzes the importance of volunteers to arts organizations – and of volunteer management.
• With Adele’s new album enjoying record-breaking sales last month despite not being available for streaming, researchers continue to debate the impact of digital music distribution. The NEA responded to a methodological debate that broke out earlier this year between the New York Times Magazine and The Future of Music Coalition by looking at what two alternative datasets might tell us about the viability of making a living as an artist in the digital age. Meanwhile, an analysis of two years of Spotify data from the Bureau of Economic Research suggests that music streaming “brings virtually no financial gain to the industry, but it also prevents losses.”
• Several reports explored the “dark side of creativity,” with growing evidence that creative people may be more dishonest and prone to depression and an exaggerated sense of entitlement.
• Finally, will there be more to be thankful for than usual this year? A Charities Aid Foundation study found that charitable giving is up around the world, including an increase from young people and men.

“Day #244 The Colour of Money” — photo by flickr user Martin Weller

Next time you hear someone complaining yet again about hard times for the arts, you might want to point out that Giving USA Foundation and the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy reported in June that charitable giving is up for a fifth consecutive year. In 2014, contributions increased more than 7%, and were up across all four categories tracked: living individuals, foundations, bequests, and corporations. Not only that, giving in the arts increased by 9.2%, the biggest jump of any sector. Overall, 4.8%–roughly $17.2 billion–of the $358.38 billion in charitable donations given in 2014 was directed towards arts and culture, placing seventh out of ten cause areas. (Religion, the perennial winner, pulled in $114.9 billion, though its share continues to drop.) Total gifts last year–driven by mega-gifts given by tech entrepreneurs–surpassed the peak last seen before the Great Recession.

Supreme Court Upholds the Affordable Care Act: We would be remiss to pass by June without acknowledging the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in favor of allowing the federal government to provide tax subsidies to help individuals buy health insurance. This is the second time the Affordable Care Act has come before the Supreme Court, and the second time that Chief Justice Roberts–a Republican–sided with his liberal colleagues on the bench. In 2012, his controlling opinion was belabored; in 2015, affirmative, establishing an expansive precedent that will make future challenges difficult. Had the Supreme Court not upheld the subsidies, residents of the 34 states which refused to set up exchanges of their own (and thus use exchanges managed by the federal government) would have lost their subsidies, affecting at least six and half, and as many as nine million, Americans. Much has been written about the benefit of the Affordable Care Act to independent artists, and we can only imagine that the loss of subsidies in states without their own exchanges would have been a disaster for this community.

Ford Foundation Focuses on Inequality: In the first major overhaul of its grant making priorities since 2007, Ford Foundation president Darren Walker announced that the foundation will direct all its resources to curbing global inequality. Although the foundation is committed to asking hard questions of its grantees, its view of inequality is broad, encompassing wealth, race, ethnicity, and gender as well as issues of access to technology and the arts. Crucially, Mr. Walker has also pledged to double the foundation’s general operating support to 40% of its grant-making budget, which will no doubt be welcome news to grantees the world over. As the second largest private foundation in the United States, one with a rich history of supporting the arts, Ford’s choices will have deep and far-reaching impact. Still, given the foundation’s pre-existing focus on social justice, it remains to be seen whether this new focus will result in significant changes in the way the foundation functions or simply new branding for the work it’s already doing.

Apple Unveils its Music Streaming Platform: Apple is the latest to jump on the increasingly crowded music streaming bandwagon. In June, it unveiled Apple Music, its own music streaming platform spearheaded by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame. There’s nothing particularly innovative about Apple’s platform, though a few features may ultimately set it apart: Netflix-level hyper-customization, hyper-vigilant personalization, Beats 1 radio with shows by Dr. Dre, Elton John, Pharrell Williams, Drake, Q-Tip, St. Vincent, Ellie Goulding, Jaden Smith and others, and an emphasis on the artist-centric social network (as opposed to the friend-centric one, embraced by Spotify and others.) There’s also no free version, only a $9.99/month subscription, but Apple has a marketplace advantage: the app is packaged into every iOS download, and it integrates neatly with iTunes, which at last count had some 800 millions user accounts. The roll out was overshadowed, however, by a letter posted by New York’s attorney general mere hours after the reveal, announcing that the streaming music business, Apple included, is under antitrust investigation.What everyone’s really talking about, however, is Taylor Swift, and how she–along with others–managed to pressure Apple into paying royalties for music played during the app’s three-month trial period. If only authors had a similarly powerful superstar who could pressure Amazon into paying royalties on the number of Kindle books downloaded, rather than on the number of pages read (currently applied only to self-published books, but the backlash has been quick).

Canada Council to Simplify Grant Programs: In a major restructuring, the Canada Council announced in June that it would streamline its grant making programs, reducing 147 separate programs–each with its own guidelines, deadlines and reporting–to a mere six. The new format will kick in in 2017, when the council turns 60. With this restructuring, the council hopes to eliminate administrative redundancies and increase organizational capacity, which would allow it to expand and refine the peer-review evaluation system and offer more application dates, making it easier for artists and organizations to apply on a cycle that makes sense of their work.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• After serving nearly three decades as the 13th Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington will step down from his post in January – opening up some new possibilities for copyright policy.
• Elspeth Revere is leaving her post of Vice President for Media, Culture and Special Initiatives for the MacArthur Foundation after 24 years with the foundation.
• Ben Cameron, currently Program Director for the Arts at the Doris Duke Foundation, was named president of the Jerome and Camargo Foundations.
• Eileen Wiseman has been appointed Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Tow Foundation.
• Angelique Power has been promoted to Program Director, Culture for the Joyce Foundation.
• Jaime Cortez joined the Barr Foundation from the San Francisco Arts Commission as a program officer for Arts & Culture.
• Eric Jolly, current president of the Science Museum of Minnesota, has been tapped to become the head of Minnesota Philanthropy Partners.
• DanceUSAorg seeks a Director of Information Services. Deadline July 8.
• The National Endowment for the Arts seeks a Media Arts Director. Posted June 15; deadline July 14.
• Zellerbach Family Foundation is hiring a Program Executive, Promoting Culture. Posted June 15; no closing date.
• Irvine Foundation is hiring a Senior Program Fellow, Arts. Posted June 16; no closing date.
• Fractured Atlas is hiring for a newly created position: Director of Programs. Posted June 18; no closing date.
• Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation seeks a Program Associate. Posted June 19; no closing date.
• The Pricing Institute seeks an experienced arts marketing professional. Posted June 28; no closing date.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• A study commissioned by the James Irvine Foundation in San Francisco, The Cultural Lives of Californians: Insights from the California Survey of Arts & Cultural Participation, takes a broad view of arts participation in California, revealing trends and statistics that are more favorable than recent NEA studies on the same topic.
• EmcArts released in-depth case study documenting the successes of Latino New South, one of its Innovation Labs for the Arts, featuring a collaboration between Levine Museum of New South, the Atlanta History Center, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
• The Center for an Urban Future released a report, a decade after their initial study, charting changes in New York’s cultural landscape.
• The Center for the Future of Museums has drafted a self-assessment tool for internal practices related to social justice within museums.
• A new guide published by the Wallace Foundation looks at benefits of audience research, and offers suggestions for carrying out effective research.
• A groundbreaking study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience sheds light on the cognitive costs of poverty.
• A new Canadian study finds that despite increased access to musical genres, musical tastes still mirror class lines.
• A paper published in the Journal of Adolescent Research finds positive outcomes for families who use media such as TV “as a tool—to laugh together, to become informed, to connect, to spark discussion.”
• A new survey of executives reveals tips and tricks for influencing decisions at the executive level.
• A recent survey conducted by the Writers’ Union of Canada finds that despite the explosion in e-publishing, salaries for writers have dropped 27% for men, and more for women.
• Two reports of note from the UK this month. The first, A review of the Social Impacts of Culture and Sport, finds that ‘evidence gaps’ are in fact holding back policy development. The second reveals that arts engagement across England as a whole has been static since 2005/06.

Our investigation is guided by three hypotheses, reproduced below:

1. Poor and economically insecure adults are significantly less likely to have access to “common” opportunities to participate in the arts as producers or consumers for a variety of reasons including inability to afford the cost of participating (e.g., tickets, materials, rehearsal space), inability to afford indirect costs (e.g., transportation, child care), lack of time (due to the need to earn a living), and lack of awareness of opportunities (including awareness of opportunities designed for the poor).
2. Poor and economically insecure adults are significantly less likely to have access to “scarce” opportunities to participate in the arts as producers for a variety of reasons including inability to afford the cost of participating (e.g., materials, rehearsal space, training), inability to afford indirect costs (e.g., transportation, child care), lack of time (due to the need to earn a living), lack of awareness of opportunities (including awareness of opportunities designed for the poor), and lack of ability to take the financial or social risks often necessary to pursue many “scarce” opportunities (e.g. debt from MFA or BFA programs, moving to an urban area, need to care for children or other family members with few resources), particularly in the absence of a strong social safety net.
3. Many people who would benefit from common or scarce opportunities to participate in the arts do not take advantage of them due to pressure from social and/or professional environments that treat participation in the arts as an unwelcome distraction from economically productive activities.

An initial scan of the literature, begun in summer 2014 and enhanced in early 2015, turned up 61 sources of potential relevance to the above hypotheses. Since December, we’ve completed initial thirty-minute reviews of 28 of these that appeared to have the most to offer in terms of building our understanding. These studies and publications are listed below. Note: if you are familiar with any of these sources and/or know of additional research that you think may be pertinent to this investigation, we welcome your thoughts in the comments!

Sources Reviewed: Arts and Economic Disadvantage (December 2014-February 2015)

Almudena, S., Gimenez-Nadal, J.I. & Gershuny, J. (2012). Leisure Inequality in the United States: 1965-2003. Demography, 49(3), 939-964. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23252678.

Bird, S. & Scott, L. (2006). A Statewide Report on Participation in the Arts. Arts Queensland Report. Retrieved from http://www.arts.qld.gov.au/publications/barriers.html.

Blume-Kohout, M.E., Leonard, S.R., & Novak-Leonard, J.L. (2015). When Going Gets Tough:Barriers and Motivations Affecting Arts Audiences. Washington, DC: National Endowment for the Arts. Retrieved from http://arts.gov/sites/default/files/when-going-gets-tough-revised2.pdf

Burton, C. & Scott, C. (2003). Museums: Challenges for the 21st Century. International Journal of Arts Management, 5(2), 56-68. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41064787.

Charlton, A., Potter, M., McGinigal, S., Romanou, E., Slade, Z., & Hewitson, B. (2010). Barriers to Participation: Analysis to Inform the Development of the 2010/11 Taking Part Survey. Department for Culture, Media, and Sport. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/137997/TP_Barriersrreport.pdf.

DiMaggio, P. & Useem, M. (1978). Social Class and Arts Consumption: The Origins and Consequences of Class Differences in Exposure to the Arts in America. Theory and Society, 5(2),141-161. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01702159#page-1.

DiMaggio, P. & Mukhtar, T. (2004). Arts Participation as Cultural Capital in the United States, 1982–2002: Signs of Decline? Poetics, 32(2), 169-194. Retrieved from https://www.princeton.edu/~artspol/orchestras/suggested_readings/dimaggio%20and%20mukhtar%20paper.pdf.

Goodin, R.E., Rice, J.M., Bittman, M., & Saunders, P. (2005). The Time-Pressure Illusion: Discretionary Time vs. Free Time. Social Indicators Research, 73 (1), 43-70. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27522213.

Hamermesh, D.S. & Lee, J. (2007). Stressed out on Four Continents: Time Crunch or Yuppie Kvetch? The Review of Economics and Statistics, 89(2), 374-383. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40043067.

Jahoda, S., Murphy, B., Virgin, V., & Woolard, C. (2014). Artists Report Back: A National Study on the Lives of Arts Graduates and Working Artists. BFAMFAPhD. Retrieved from http://goo.gl/N2AYyx.

Kesenne, S. (1994). Can a Basic Income Cure Baumol’s Disease? Journal of Cultural Economics, 18(2), 93-100. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41810509.

Kraaykamp, G., van Gils, W., & Ultee, W. (2008). Cultural Participation and Time Restrictions: Explaining the Frequency of Individual and Joint Cultural Visits. Poetics, 36(4), 316-332. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304422X08000284.

Levy-Garboua, L. & Montmarquette, C. (1996). A Microeconometric Study of Theatre Demand. Journal of Cultural Economics, 20(1), 25-50. Retrieved from http://www.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/IMG/pdf/theatre_demand_1996_J._Cult._Econ._.pdf.

Luftig, R.L., Donovan, M.J., Farnbaugh, C.L., Kennedy, E. E., Filicko, T., Wyszomirski, M.J. (2003). So What Are You Doing after College? An Investigation of Individuals Studying the Arts at the Post-Secondary Level, Their Job Aspirations and Levels of Realism. Studies in Art Education, 45(1), 5-19. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1321105.

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Research question

• Do economically disadvantaged/insecure people have fewer opportunities to participate fully?

Hypotheses

1. Poor and economically insecure adults are significantly less likely to have access to “common” opportunities to participate in the arts as producers or consumers for a variety of reasons including inability to afford the cost of participating (e.g., tickets, materials, rehearsal space), inability to afford indirect costs (e.g., transportation, child care), lack of time (due to the need to earn a living), and lack of awareness of opportunities (including awareness of opportunities designed for the poor).
2. Poor and economically insecure adults are significantly less likely to have access to “scarce” opportunities to participate in the arts as producers for a variety of reasons including inability to afford the cost of participating (e.g., materials, rehearsal space, training), inability to afford indirect costs (e.g., transportation, child care), lack of time (due to the need to earn a living), lack of awareness of opportunities (including awareness of opportunities designed for the poor), and lack of ability to take the financial or social risks often necessary to pursue many “scarce” opportunities (e.g. debt from MFA or BFA programs, moving to an urban area, need to care for children or other family members with few resources), particularly in the absence of a strong social safety net.
3. Many people who would benefit from common or scarce opportunities to participate in the arts do not take advantage of them due to pressure from social and/or professional environments that treat participation in the arts as an unwelcome distraction from economically productive activities.

Open questions for focus going forward:

• What do poor people know about arts opportunities?
• What are poor people’s attitudes toward the arts?
• Mapping income of neighborhoods and arts opportunities?
• Estimates of the cost of creating art (material, rehearsal, production costs)
• Estimates of artists’ earnings
• How many successful artists are independently wealthy or rely economically on a spouse?
• What do we know about how Americans spend their time?